


Tootsie Pop

by Slaskia



Series: Misfortunate Events [10]
Category: Halo
Genre: Art, Candy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-08
Updated: 2009-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-19 03:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slaskia/pseuds/Slaskia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zeno figures out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, only Johnson doesn't 'approve' of his means of 'disposing' the failures....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tootsie Pop

Johnson looked in the mirror one last time before heading out, making sure everything was perfect. His hair was within regulations, his dress uniform was pressed and clean, medals polished and on straight: he was good to go.  There was an important meeting today with High Command with a few important members from the Elite government in attendance: Elites he actually _respected_.  

He had no qualms with the Arbiter or Shipmaster Rtas ‘Vadum, but the current Elite Ambassador seemed to have a knack for driving him up the wall any time he is in the same room as he is.  Sure, Zeno ‘Ribal was good at what he does: Johnson did actually respect his skills in both combat and intelligence gathering.  However what ruins any chance of respect for him on a _personal_ level was a few things: for one, the Elite had a bad habit of causing mischief whenever he was bored and sometimes even when he was in the middle of official duties as well.  That and he’s gay:  Johnson could never get comfortable around homosexuals, even among his own people. They just…give him the creeps. 

The human ambassador shook his head and pushed thoughts of ‘Zeno’ out of his mind:  he was in too good a mood to ruin it thinking about him and his antics.  So after a final check over his uniform, he left his quarters and started heading for the conference room.  _Think I’ll take a short cut through the recreation center._   He thought as he walked down the hall.  It wasn’t so much that he was in a hurry but thought he would get a little face time with any troops that were there before the meeting. 

When he entered the recreation center he quickly noticed something was amiss.  All over the tables were these weird, multicolored objects: there was even some on the walls, put into some sort of odd pattern.  Upon closer inspection he recognized what made up the objects:  a type of old school hard candy that was set on a small stick, a tootsie pop if he remembered correctly.  The candy looked to be in various stages of consummation and put into an array of various shapes.  On one table they were arranged into a partly complete ball. Another table had what looked like a tootsie pop fence, complete with a little house in the middle.  Yet another table was home to some weird looking…sculpture, if you could call it that. 

 _Someone has way too much time on their hands…_   Johnson thought, his eyes wide at the scene.  _Who would…_  

“At last!”  A familiar voice shouted.  Johnson, now having a bad feeling, turned around and groaned when he realized his feeling was quite right. 

It was none other then Zeno himself, looking quite happy and pleased with himself.  The nearly nine-foot tall Elite spotted him and ran up to him.  “I solved a mystery that has been plaguing your species for centuries!”  He proclaimed proudly. 

“What…mystery….?” Johnson asked hesitantly. 

“How many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop,” Zeno said proudly, waving the almost bare sucker stick in front of his face, “182 licks!” 

“Then…what….”  Johnson looked around purposely at all the tootsie pop ‘sculptures’ all over the rec room. 

“Ooooh, those are my ‘failures’.” 

“Failures…” 

“When I lost count,” Zeno replied honestly,  “I did not want to just eat them, as I wanted to try out that lobster curry Captain Smith was making for a bunch of troops for dinner and I didn't want to just throw them away either.  So…I decided to do something constructive with them!”  He threw his arms wide over his work.  “I got quite a few positive comments from your fellow humans already: they did not think my people could be so artistic!” 

Johnson couldn’t think of anything to say, he just stood there aghast, mouth hanging slightly open.  “I do have a small problem though…”  Zeno admitted, finally. 

“Oh, you finally realize the maintenance guys are going to kill you for putting these sticky, alien spit coated things all over the place?” 

“Noooo.  I have so many left over!”  Zeno pulled out what had to be the largest bag of suckers he had ever seen: where he found it, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.  “Hmm….maybe I should try building a replica of one of your monuments on Earth?  Like the EiffelTower?  Oh I know!  The Statue of Liberty!” 

“How about…just holding on to those things until next Halloween or something instead….” 

“Aw come on Johnson, do not be such a spoil sport.”  Zeno then reached down and rubbed his hand in his neatly combed hair.  Johnson wasn’t sure what pissed him off more:  that Zeno rubbed his head like an adult would do to a child, or the fact that due to having handled so many tootsie pops, his hand was extremely sticky and now _stuck_ in his hair.  

“Ut oh…,” the Elite Ambassador started tugging and pulling, trying to free his hand from his hair, only resulting in pulling the human Ambassador around.  “Um…”  Finally Zeno put his hand on Johnson’s shoulder to brace him and just yanked hard. 

Johnson screamed in pain as not only did the Elite free his hand, but took what felt like half his hair out of his scalp.  “Dammit Zeno!  Do you know how hard it is to get my hair to cooperate and get it to look just right!?”  Johnson growled as he rubbed his head:  great, now his hands were sticky too. 

“Ewww…gross…I got human hair on my hand.”  Zeno whined as he stared at the few dozen black hair strands on his palm.  The Elite then finally removed his hand from his shoulder, however Johnson quickly noticed that not only did Zeno leave sticky residue on his freshly dry-cleaned and pressed dress whites, but somehow managed to remove over half the medals on his breast in the process.  

“Um…are these yours?”  Zeno asked sheepishly as he pulled the medals off his hand, “You can have the hair back too…you look like you kind of need it.” 

Now Johnson was no longer disgusted or annoyed: he was getting pissed.  “How do you do it…you overgrown, split jawed lizard!?” he growled, “every single time I have a meeting coming up, you somehow manage to screw up my uniform!” 

Zeno didn’t seem phased one bit.  “Come on Johnson, I know you have more then one set of dress whites.” 

“I don’t _have_ another set of dress whites now!” 

“Oh yes…that is right.  I had dyed those pink didn’t I?”  Zeno grinned.  “A shame you burned them…you looked good in pink….” 

He couldn’t take it anymore.  Johnson grabbed the bag of tootsie pops and started wailing at the Elite with it.  Zeno quickly got the hint.  “Exit.  Stage left!”  The Elite yelled as he bolted.  Yet he was laughing, which only pissed Johns on off even more…. 

\--- 

The Arbiter, Rtas and Lord Hood were walking down one of the hallways, having a causal discussion while on the way to the conference room.  Their discussion was interrupted when Zeno came running down the hall from the opposite direction. Hot on his heels was Johnson, swinging a large bag of what looked like suckers.  Every time he managed to hit Zeno with it, some of them would go flying due to a hole that was now in the bag. 

“Trick or Treat!  Merry Christmas!  Whoop woo woo woo woo!” Zeno cried as he passed them. Johnson got a smack in right then, resulting in a shower of tootsie pops all over them. 

The trio just watched them wide eyed and jaws open for a moment.  “Are you sure Zeno was a good choice to be our Ambassador?”  The Arbiter asked Rtas once the shock wore off, “And do we even want to know just how _this_ came all about?” 

“To your first question Arbiter: not any more,”  Rtas replied, looking down the hallway the two disappeared down, “As for your second: I think for the sake of our sanity we best not even _try_ to find out….” 

“Oooh!  Orange!  My favorite!”  Lord Hood said suddenly as he picked up one of the tootsie pops, unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth.  The leader of the human military then happily walked away, humming to himself, leaving the two Sangheili blinking in shock once again. 

“I recant my first question….”  The Arbiter muttered.


End file.
